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5 August 2012 | Kamalpreet Badasha

Councils in Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Lambeth, Lewisham, Havering and Croydon are all putting the same IT system in place to make savings.

Oracle release 12 is a single database that manages the human resource, finance, payroll and procurement functions. It will eliminate the need for several business systems and spreadsheets to manage these functions and is expected to result in a combined saving of £6 million.

Lambeth Council led the procurement exercise negotiating a better price for the tool, which included licences, and agreed on a single price for Capgemini to implement it across all six councils this summer.

The project is part of Programme Athena, which aims to converge IT and business processes across London public sector organisations to make savings and is part-funded by Capital Ambition.

“This is a common sense solution for councils that have common needs,” said councillor Paul McGlone, lead member for finance at Lambeth Council. “We all have similar support functions like HR, finance and procurement and if we have one way of doing them we streamline our processes, save costs and protect services for residents. This system not only cuts our running costs but improves our systems, reduces paperwork and makes it easier for our suppliers to do business with us.”